One Way Students Can Be Successful with 4th Grade Wonders Paired Passages

Do you skip the Wonders Paired Passages in the 4th Grade Anthology books because you are not sure what to do with them? Or you aren’t sure whether it’s helpful for your students to spend time on them? Stick with me – I’m going to show you a weekly routine that you can use to help your students be successful comparing passages!

There are two skills I want my students to practice often:

1. Differentiating key details in text from unimportant information
2. Writing to explain

Number one is a really hard skill. Have you ever asked your students to find key details and they pull out the most obscure ones? It’s a head-scratcher – but they can get better with practice!

Number two is IMPORTANT. This is a skill that students can carry across subject areas and disciplines. The ability to explain something in writing is a life skill, which is why I want them to practice it often.

Why do I bring this up? Because with Reading Wonders – your students have the opportunity to do this every single week. At the end of each Anthology passage – there is a passage that is paired with the Anthology text.

Students will be given:

• 2 fiction stories to compare, or
• 2 non-fiction texts to compare or,
• 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction to compare

4th Grade Wonders Paired Passages Weekly Routine

In order to give my students the practice that I believe they need, I like to have a consistent weekly routine. This is why I have included these two activities in every week of my Wonders 4th-grade Reading Response resource:

1. Compare and Contrast Graphic Organizer
2. Write to Explain Summary

Let me show you how it works.

This is Unit 1, Week 1 Paired Passages which are both fiction stories. The organizer is designed so that students look for 2 differences and 2 similarities between the stories. This is the right amount of details for their summary.

Comparing and Contrasting Two Fiction Passages

This is the completed organizer and summary by Cheyanna. She does a good job comparing and contrasting “The Princess and the Pizza” and “Tomas and His Sons”. She uses correct capitalization, punctuation, and transition words in her summary. Most importantly, Cheyanna was able to find key details that she could use to compare and contrast which she then used in her summary. Win-Win!

Comparing and Contrasting Two Non-Fiction Paired Passages

Antwan is comparing two non-fiction texts, “The Buffalo are Back”, and “Energy in the Ecosystem” in Unit 2, Week 3 of the Wonders Anthology. He was able to see how both texts had the same main idea which is important. He also found that the overall genre was expository, but one was narrative non-fiction.

Comparing and Contrasting Fiction and Non-Fiction Paired Passages

Anna is comparing a fiction (fantasy) passage with an Expository passage which is the most difficult of the three comparison passage types. It can be very difficult to find similarities, but she was able to find these two and did a good job of summarizing those.

The skills that students are using on this assignment are impressive! They are differentiating key details in multiple types of texts and writing to explain those similarities and differences every single week! Can you imagine how this improves their close reading skills and their writing?

A big advantage to this is that YOU don’t have to plan an activity for this. It’s done for you. Every week. Every unit. All year.

>>>> If you would like to try this resource, click here for a free Unit 1, Week 4 Packet that includes all three activities!

Learn more about this Wonders resource in these posts:

• How to Use This Wonders 4th Grade Activities Bundle
• The Best Gradual Release Lesson for Wonders 4th Grade

4th Grade Wonders Paired Passages – Digital Version

An identical digital version of this year-long resource is included in this bundle. Paperless – No PREP – easy to assign!

This NO-PREP resource is available in a Wonders 4th Grade Year Long Bundle that is 20% off the individual units packets.